Passion

This is an article I wrote for Onerock magazine a while. I'm reprinting it here so that I don't lose it. It's not one of my bests, but I still think it has some 'passion' to it.

The word "passion" brings forth pictures of lovers in an embrace on paper back novel covers that women read, movie screen romance with muscular men and beautiful women with windswept hair. The man gazes lustfully into the woman's eyes and says her name. "Martha!" he says with unmatched passion. "Edward!" she whispers as if she were to swoon away. They kiss passionately and the camera moves to the wind blowing through the sheer curtains in an open window.

The word "Passion" does not invoke a bloody, beaten, and bruised man who is being blinded by the mix of blood and sweat that is covering his eyes. The pain of forty fresh whip cracks is amplified by the rubbing of wood across his back. All the while men jeer at him as he falls to his knees. He finds some small relief in a woman who is willing to clean his face and a black man who is willing to help him ease the weight upon his shoulders. They finally reach the hill that he is to die on. They strip him. The wounds on his back, which were beginning to heal slightly with scabs are now ripped open. He is laid upon the peice of wood he has been carrying and is nailed to it. The cross is erected. He spends the next three hours slowly dying of suffocation.

Webster's Dictionary basically says Passion means suffering. It also means conviction and love. Ultimately it means being commited to something even to death. If we really want to know what passion is we need to commit ourselves to something that is worth dying for be it our faith, our family or a righteous cause. For some it is the poor of the world, for others the unborn. We need to find that very thing in life that is worth dying for and take the gift that Christ gave us and use it to show our conviction. If you can speak well, than speak for Christ and preach his message in some way. If you write well, than write for Christ. Do all things for Christ because he ultimately is the one who is worth dying for.

Ultimately, passion has nothing to do with sex and everything to do with love. Love and truth are the same thing because God is truth and love. We should be willing to die for truth and love because we are dying for God. God loves us. He loves us to death. He wants us to try to love him to the best of our ability. The best we can give him is our entire lives because that is what he gave us, his own life.

The patient and humble endurance of the Cross - whatever nature it may be - is the highest work we have to do.
- Blessed Katherine Drexel